The NHS is Society’s Responsibility

Nigel Farage tells us the “NHS might have to be replaced by private health insurance” which means there is no political salvation from this lunacy, even from the new kid on the block. Westminster truly has lost the plot in avoiding its responsibilities to the people.

Let’s get right back to basics and remember that this is a SUPPORT SERVICE to Society. It is a non-profit insurance scheme which is paid for by that Society in the sure knowledge that, like any good insurance policy, it will look after ALL of its members in times of hardship without fear of fault or favour.

We have an aging population that all parties have been aware of for a very long time and which they have systematically and irresponsibly buck passed on to the next incumbent, ensuring we arrive at the mess we are now in. Healthcare is a moral issue, not political or financial and demonstrates the level of care Society has towards its sick, old and infirm. Currently that caring is being torn apart by the profit and greed of unregulated Capitalism!

This has been made abundantly clear from the experience in America in particular, where the very people who need the support cannot get it because they cannot afford it, or are not acceptable to insurance companies. Profit is ‘Playing God’ (often by tick boxes!) in discriminating who it can make money from and who it will allow to suffer, or die!

We are being dragged, kicking and screaming, towards the US experience by a Parliament who is obligated by one of the many conditions of the ‘Austerity Measures’ imposed when taking on an ever growing mountain of debt we have not authorised. We are in the grip of career politicians who care little about this country and its people, in their desperate attempts to remain in power at any cost.

What is so repugnant to me is there is no respect for people in any of what we are now experiencing. This Unregulated Capitalism not only makes profits from employees and consumers but also now looks to make profits from them when they are sick.

After a lifetime of working for one, or a number of companies, those same companies seek to shrug off the responsibility they have to repay their workers with a secure retirement they have earned from contributing to those companies’ profits as those very same consumers and employees.

I would suggest, that we should be coming at this problem from a totally different direction than a parliament that increasingly cow-tows to their corporate masters. By looking at our current financial systems and recognising that money is no longer our servant, we can see that it is being encouraged to become our master, focussing entirely upon subduing and controlling us through debt – Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy are perfect examples.

By following the example of strong leadership in Peru and other Latin American countries we need to confront the very core of the problem first and foremost. Once we take control of printing our own money, instead of borrowing it from banks at a horrendous cost in interest and debt obligations, of which the NHS is but one such abuse, we are in a position to become masters of our own destiny. The interest alone we are paying would go a long way to funding a health service the rest of the world would be envious of.

In this, an election year, I am dumb founded that our political parties are pussyfooting around the perimeter of this problem by pursuing ‘business models’ as the solution to the care profession.

Such is this irresponsibility that patients are dying unnecessarily and the morale of our conscientious doctors and nurses is on the floor, driving many of them to emigrate to a more supportive environment. Not one of our leaders seems embarrassed by this national disgrace, given what we have invested in training these wonderful people, only now to abuse and lose them.

Fighting and arguing about the many individual abuses within the health service will only allow politicians to counter-argue that privatisation is the solution. It has to be attacked from the fundamental core issue of debt ladened obligation that is making our governments increasingly more secretive and ‘economical with the truth’ on the direction they are forcing us to follow.

Left and Right can offer no way out because they have created the problem by systematically ignoring it. People must demand their power back this May by supporting the party that will introduce People Driven Referendums on any and everything there is sufficient interest in.

I bet the NHS would be the subject commanding the number 1 position . . . and then something could be done by the people for the people!

Until the next time

Thinking from his Book: Global Magna Carta. Returning Power to the 99% . . . If They Want It! By J T Coombes